Heritage: What is it good for? Not very much, apparently when it comes to Woolwich

Prepare for a rant!

Whilst on a cruise some years ago, I struck up a conversation with a chap from the Newcastle area. He was bemoaning the fact that the lifeblood of that city – heavy industry – had almost completely disappeared and the local economy had suffered grievously. When I commiserated with him, he said something along the lines that as a Londoner I had no idea about what he was talking about as London had never suffered that way.

I soon put him right ... but then realised that the history of the Industrial Revolution is not well known to many people, nor that until relatively recently London was a major industrial city. I don't have to look far from where I live to prove that. At one point, the Woolwich Arsenal was the largest manufacturing plant in the world, covered 1,285 acres of land (520ha) and employed close to 80,000 people. There was barely a family in the area where at least one member didn't work in the Arsenal. It finally closed as a factory in 1967, with devastating effects on the local economy from which it is still recovering.

The gates of the Woolwich Arsenal.

A map of the Woolwich Arsenal in 1867. By the 1930s the site had expanded to the east for several miles.

Woolwich also had a Royal Naval Dockyard, which had built a large number of ships from the early sixteenth century until the late nineteenth century. King Henry VIII's flagship Henri Grâce à Dieu (Great Harry) was built in Woolwich in 1512, as was HMS Sovereign of the Seas in 1637. HMS Royal George, a first-rate ship of the line whose sinking in 1782 was one of the worst disasters in the history of the Royal Navy, was built in the dockyard and launched in 1756. HMS Beagle the ship that carried the expedition that naturalist Charles Darwin took part in was launched there in 1820, as was HMS Repulse, the last wooden battleship to be constructed for the Royal Navy.

The Woolwich Dockyard when it was one of the main building yards for Royal Navy ships.

The Woolwich Dockyard was at the forefront of the introduction of steam power into the Royal Navy and was the first of its steam engineering factories. It began manufacturing boilers and assembling the steam engines in 1831, and remained an important manufacturing facility until 1865, when it closed (mainly due to lack of space and the growing size of the new ironclad warships) and most of its plant was moved to Chatham.

A map of the Woolwich Dockyard in the 1860s.

Close to both the Arsenal and the Dockyard there were private foundries, one of which – the Blakely Ordnance Company of London – manufactured artillery for the Confederate Army. Just across the river in Blackwall was the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company Limited, which built the world's first all-iron warship, HMS Warrior, in 1860 as well as numerous warships for the navies of the world. The last large warship built by the yard was HMS Thunderer, a battleship that took part in the Battle of Jutland. She was launched in 1911.

So, what is the rant about?

Quite simply this ... the Royal Borough of Greenwich has shut the Local Heritage Centre and Archives (which are based in Woolwich) and moved their contents into storage, making them the only London borough not to have such a facility. This comes after the demise of Firepower! the Royal Artillery Museum, in 2016 and a planning battle to stop the developers of the Woolwich Arsenal site from demolishing one of the historic buildings in the Arsenal to make way for a taxi rank and open space next to the entrance to the as-yet-to-be-opened Woolwich Crossrail/Elizabeth Line railway station! I understand that there has been a suggestion that some of the old buildings in the Woolwich Dockyard area - most of which has already been redeveloped for housing - should be demolished to make way for more housing. There are also suggestions that the land fronting the famous Woolwich Barracks should be sold by the Ministry of Defence for housing development when the Army moves out of Woolwich in eight years’ time.

Would this happen in the centre of Greenwich? Would they allow houses to be built on land between the Royal Naval College (now the site of Greenwich University) and the National Maritime Museum? Would anyone suggest that Greenwich Park and/or Blackheath should be redeveloped? I very strongly doubt it ... and yet the same people who would not allow that to happen to Greenwich and Blackheath are perfectly happy to allow Woolwich's heritage to be despoiled, demolished, and forgotten.

Heritage: What is it good for? Not very much, apparently when it comes to Woolwich!

Spanish Civil War: Day-by-Day: 9th October 1938

The Republican submarine C1 was sunk by Nationalist aircraft at Barcelona.

A C-class Submarine.

Dice holders

My PORTABLE WARGAME rules require players to keep track of the Strength Point values of each of their units. In the past I've used a hand-written paper roster, plastic Roman blind rings, and numbered magnetic tiles to record changes to a unit's SPs.

None of the above was 100% effective, and I have been looking for potential replacements. Recently, Archduke Piccolo used some small D6s and MDF dice holders for this purpose, and I decided to give them a go. I sent an order to Warbases, who sell both the dice and the MDF dice holders, and I intend to spend several hours gluing the dice holders to suitably-sized MDF bases.

The finished dice holders will need to be sealed with a couple of coats of PVA before they are painted ... and then I can find out if they are better than the other methods for recording SPs that I have previously tried.

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The image used above is © Warbases.

Hexes and Miniatures: A website that is worth visiting

A few days ago, Chris Johnson – one of my regular blog readers – sent me a very interesting link to a website I had not come across before. It is called HEXES AND MINIATURES, and it contains a mixture of rules and scenarios that are well worth looking at.

The design of the rules used are either commercial (e.g. Sam Mustafa’s ROMMEL), based on commercial rules (e.g. Sam Mustafa’s BLÜCHER), or are home-grown. The scenarios are very useful, cover a wide variety of historical periods and will appeal to wargamers who want to adapt them to use with THE PORTABLE WARGAME and Richard Borg’s COMMANDS & COLORS rules.

Stepping down

Yesterday I relinquished the Mastership of the Veritatem Sequere Lodge No.9615, Hertfordshire's Research Lodge. I Installed the new Worshipful Master in the Chair of the Lodge, having occupied it myself for the previous twelve months.

The ceremony took place in Radlett, Hertfordshire, after which the new Worshipful Master gave his Installation Lecture. Once the Lodge was closed, we retired to the bar for a quick drink before we ate a meal (called a Festive Board in Freemasonry), which – as is traditional in the Research Lodge – was followed by a question-and-answer session about the subject of the lecture.

Although I am no longer the Worshipful Master of the Lodge, I am still the Province of Hertfordshire's Provincial Grand Orator, and I will continue to visit Lodges both inside and outside the Province to deliver lectures on Masonic topics. Surprisingly, (or not so if you know my areas of interest) most of my lectures touch upon subjects that have a considerable military content. They include:

• Sir Charles Warren: Soldier, Explorer, Engineer, Policeman, Politician, and Freemason
• Masonic references in the works of Rudyard Kipling
• Freemasonry in the British Army
• The Halsey's of Hertfordshire
• Brothers in Arms and Brothers in the Lodge: The stories of the members of The Grove Park Lodge No.2732 who took part in the First World War

I have turned the last of these into a book – BROTHERS IN ARMS AND BROTHERS IN THE LODGE – and have recently published a book – MASTERS AT WAR VOLUME 1 – about the members of the Hertfordshire Masters' Lodge who had military careers before and during the First World War.

It is nice to be able to combine two of my hobbies – Freemasonry and military history – and I only wish that I could include wargaming in the mix as well.

Keys ... or how to waste a lot of time and money!

Just over a week ago Sue and I managed to get ourselves locked out of our house. Not realising that I had left my keys in the front door lock on the inside, she shut the door ... and could not lock the door or open the door again from the outside.

Nearly two hours later (and after spending £360.00!) the old lock had been drilled out and replaced. The new lock came with three keys, and I had four copies cut as we like to have spares available to give to people should the need arise.

The new lock lasted a week before it stopped working properly. (It kept jamming, and even using the original keys it proved difficult to lock and unlock.) We called the locksmith who had installed the new lock, and a replacement lock was provided. It also came with three keys ... and then the saga of getting additional keys cut began.

To date we have had five attempts to get new keys cut that will work in the new door locks. To the naked eye they look the same as the original keys ... but they are just sufficiently different not to work. They go in and out of the lock without a problem, but will not engage the lock tumblers exactly, thus making it impossible to lock or unlock the door.

So far I seem to have spent hours driving to and from various key cutters to acquire a set of additional keys that will work. My patience is getting rather thin, especially as I have several other things that I want to be doing (e.g. revising the words of the Masonic ritual I will use this afternoon to Install a new Worshipful Master into the Chair of a Lodge and writing and revising my PORTABLE NAPOLEONIC WARGAME book).

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I finally found someone who could cut keys that worked in our new door lock.

It only took six attempts!

440 The Strand

Yesterday Sue and I attended a reception at Coutts and Company's Head Office at 440, The Strand, in central London.

We were invited because I have been a customer of the bank for over fifty years, having opened my account on the first day I started work there in 1968. I worked for them until late 1970, when I resigned and went to Teacher Training College in Bishop's Stortford, Herfordshire.

Even though I was not particularly well off during my time at college and during the early years of my teaching career, I kept my account with the bank and will continue to do so for as long as I can afford it. Needless to say, I have never earned enough money to benefit from the excellent wealth management services they provide, but I enjoyed my time working there and keeping my account with them is a constant reminder of that. In the three years I was there, I turned from a schoolboy into a man. I learned how to work to deadlines (something some of my fellow students never, ever got to grips with!) and take responsibility for making things happen. My school had provided me with the basic skills; Coutts gave me the opportunity to hone them.

When I joined the bank in 1968, I was first sent to the Aldermanbury Square branch in the City. This was situated at the bottom of Royex House on the south side of London Wall, in the midst of the then-new Barbican development. After a few weeks I was sent to Head Office for a six-week induction course, where I learned a lot (and I mean A LOT!) about the sort of people who banked with Coutts ... and how to write letters to them. Knowing the difference between how to address an Archbishop and a Bishop, a Duke and a Viscount, and the difference between a Knight Baronet and a Knight Batchelor seemed to feature highly on the syllabus. I also got to visit the automated cheque clearance system that was housed in the Lombard Street office (it was a very early form of computer that sorted and recorded cheques submitted to the London Clearing House by using the magnetic characters printed along the bottom edge of the cheque) which proved very useful as I later worked in the Clearing Department of the Aldermanbury Square branch.

I also visited other branches of the bank, including those in Fleet Street, Cadogan Square, Sloane Square, and Knightsbridge, and took my turn as a teller on the front counter, usually at busy times when there were a lot of customers who needed serving. I enjoyed my time working as a banker, and had I not left to become a teacher, I may well have risen to hold a senior post in the bank.

The Portable Napoleonic Wargame: Progress and changes

Despite being very busy on the Masonic front and having a heavy cold that I just cannot seem to shrug off, I have been doing some work on THE PORTABLE NAPOLEONIC WARGAME book. Thanks to some very good feedback from Arthur Harman, one or two cosmetic changes have been made to the text as it currently stands in order to improve a reader's understanding of the exemplar battle reports. More importantly, the Close Combat mechanism has been altered to make it less counter-intuitive to use.

In the original mechanism, which I have used in my previous PORTABLE WARGAME rules, getting a high score was bad and a low score was good, and the bonuses and penalties were written to take this into account. However, as players throw for their own unit in the Close Combat, it has been pointed out that it was possible (even probable!) for them to misunderstand the way the mechanism worked. I have therefore turned the whole thing on its head so that getting a high score means that a unit is less likely to be affected by the Close Combat and getting a low score means that they are increasingly likely to suffer an adverse effect.

The current mechanism for the BRIGADE rules reads as follows:

Close Combat Rules

• Both sides roll a D6 die for their unit involved in a Close Combat and add or subtract any relevant modifiers.
• Increase the D6 die roll score of the unit initiating the Close Combat by 2 if it is a cavalry unit in line attacking an infantry unit in line.
• Increase the D6 die roll score of the unit initiating the Close Combat by 1 if it is an infantry unit or cavalry unit in column attacking an infantry unit in line or an artillery unit.
• Increase the D6 die roll score by 1 if a friendly commander is in the same grid area as the unit for which the D6 die is being rolled.
• Increase the D6 die roll score of the unit initiating the Close Combat by 1 if the attack is being made against the flank or rear of an enemy unit.
• Reduce the D6 die roll score by 1 if the unit is being attacked in the flank or rear by an enemy unit.
• Reduce the D6 die roll score by 1 if the enemy unit is uphill, in cover or in fortifications.
• Reduce the D6 die roll score of the unit initiating the Close Combat by 2 if it is a cavalry unit in line or column attacking an infantry unit in square.
• Results:
• Modified D6 die score = 2 or less: The unit is hit.
• Modified D6 die score = 3 or more: The unit is unaffected.

The following extract from one of the battle reports explains how the mechanism works:

Both sides threw a D6 die. The British – who initiated this round of close combat – threw 1 and the American threw 2. Because the British were uphill of the Americans, the American D6 die score was reduced by 1. As a result, they both had to resolve the effect the close combat had upon them.

The 3rd Foot Regiment threw a D6 to resolve what happened and a D6 die score of 1 meant that the unit lost 1 SP.

The 4th US Infantry Regiment threw a D6 to resolve what happened and a D6 die score of 3 meant that the unit lost 1 SP. As the unit had already lost 3 SPs, it was destroyed, and the survivors fled the field of battle.

The 3rd Regiment are engaged in close combat by the 4th US Infantry Regiment.

On the face of it, the change is not drastic, but with luck it will make the mechanism easier to understand and to use.

Square hills

The next exemplar battle I am going to fight so that it can be featured in THE PORTABLE NAPOLEONIC WARGAME book will use a 10cm square grid. I had marked the corners of the 10cm grid squares on an 80cm/32" square piece of green felt cloth to form an 8 x 8 grid before I realised that I needed some suitable hills.

After looking at various options, I decided to buy some ready-made 10cm square wooden boxes. (They are 10cm /4" x 10cm/4" x 3cm/1.2".)

The ones that I bought have lift-off lids, and the lids (which are 10cm/4" x 10cm/4" x 1.5cm/0.6") can be used on their own to represent low hills.

The boxes will need to be sealed with a couple of coats of PVA and then painted in a shade of green that is reasonably close to the colour of the felt cloth.

Nugget 311

I will be posting out the latest issue of THE NUGGET to members of Wargame Developments later today, and it should be with them within the next few days.

I have already uploaded the PDF version of this issue to the Wargame Developments website and it should be available to read online.

IMPORTANT: Please note that this is the second issue of THE NUGGET to be published for the 2018-2019 subscription year. If you have not yet re-subscribed, you can do so by using the PayPal button on the relevant page of the website.